In a painstaking process this alternate history storyline has been researched and is presented for your entertainment.
By using historical documents from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff we know exactly what the contingency plans were in the case of an expected Soviet attack in 1946.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

“Vertical Insertion” by Ranger Elite

Weapons
Development in WWIII 1946

0600

Training Field,

Pope Army Airfield,

Outside Fayetteville, North Carolina

General Maxwell Taylor was
particularly impressed with all the hard work that he and his planners had done
in advocating for and utilizing this new and novel method of warfare: the new
term coined for it by the powers that be was heliborne vertical troop
insertion. General Taylor used a far simpler and more appropriate term: air
assault.

Over the past couple of months,
General Taylor and his counterparts in
the USAAF on this project were working feverishly to convert the
newly-reconstituted 13th Airborne Division to Air Assault status,
adding the Sikorsky H-19B and Piasecki H-25C helicopters as integral air assets
of the division. This move was unprecedented as all air units, regardless of
size and mission, were controlled by the USAAF command structure in support of
U.S. Army missions. The helicopter aviation regiments would be modeled after
the cavalry in that their mobile units would be broken down by squadron, and
each squadron was paired with an airborne battalion. Over the past three weeks,
General Taylor has rigorously drilled the soldiers and airmen of the 13th
Airborne Division (Provisional Air Assault) until they worked as a finely-oiled
machine. Today would be their final exam and their exhibition to a very select
group of generals and admirals, and congressmen, who approved the project,
along with the Secretary of War, Robert Patterson. They would not fail.

With the launch of a star flare, the soldiers ran from
their staging areas to the waiting, warmed-up, helicopters. As each helicopter
was filled with soldiers and their equipment, they received clearance to take
off, assuming a moderately dense formation while in flight to their target
landing zone. As the helicopters made staggered landings, with H-19's carrying
troops and H-25's carrying Jeeps and other light equipment, all off-loading in
an astonishing amount of time into the landing zone. In a matter of less than
an hour, the division was assembled in the landing zone and had begun to
establish their defensive perimeter, as they would have under actual combat
conditions. General Taylor was rather impressed himself with the performance of
the division, as was the Secretary of War, who congratulated the General on his
hard work and proposed that he draw up plans to convert two more divisions to
“Air Assault” status. With a salute and a handshake, the future of warfare had
been changed yet again